UW Navigation - SDI or SSI?

[Pearlman]

Hi Folks,
I am thinking of doing a UW navigation refresher course for my upcoming vacation at Koh Tao.
I am looking for some training that is more than rudimentary which involves practicing the skills on the surface drills. I already did navigation as part of AOWC years back but never practiced and the resulting learning was zilch.

So would you recommend SDI over SSI? Or is there another Cert that is more intense and drill oriented than these two?

Thanks very much for your advice.

 

[Fedaykin]

I'm going to give the same answer given as before; "The most important factor in choosing your dive eduaction is the instructor, not his agency."

 

[NAM001]

Unless you can obtain some tricks from the instructor, you may not get much out of the course , making anyone reasonable a possible good choice. From my experience you either are good at it or not. You either swim in a straight line and can determine time and distance or you cant. Without the skills of time distance, straight line movement. no course can help you. If you have those skills you probably do not need a course unless its about triginomitry for 3rd side of a triangle. Way point navigation is easy its the fne points that make you or break you. those fine points are manditory in low vis.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

In 2008 I looked at the uw nav course for 5 or 6 agencies and concluded that if taught exactly to standards, based on my own experience and diving with several divers that made it look like magic, they all pretty much suck. They are geared toward the most rudimentary skills with little real world information. They are also not set up to teach divers the steps they need to take in a way to truly be successful. There are not enough dives, unrealistic goals, and too little information.
So I wrote my own. I used basic SEI standards and procedures then developed my own course standards. As a result my uw nav course can be tailored to each diver or buddy team. It requires 6 hours of classroom and maybe a pool session depending on the diver. There are 6 dives and it requires non silting kick and helicopter turn proficiency. We use lines and reels. Sharing the task loading is a key component as are excellent communication skills.
The goals are achieved using small steps and distances to build confidence and ensure successful outcomes.
Most uw nav courses are not like this. They can be if the instructor wants to make them so. It is up to the student however, to insist on this level of training or inform the instructor you're going elsewhere.

 

[Pearlman]

Thank you for your responses. I cant agree more with all of you who commented. I thought about this a lot before actually and began to feel that the first step is to learn and practice an awareness and sense of direction on land (of course its different UW as the boat on the surface is gonna move with the current or wind or engine power). To this end I started searching for Orienteering clubs but there simply aren't any in India. The idea was to inculcate mental habits and practice it as an enjoyable leisure hobby till one makes it innate to ones way of thinking about where one is going (especially practice using a compass). There are lots of hill climbing and weekend outdoors leisure groups here (more popularly known as trekking clubs), but absolutely nobody practices or teaches Orienteering as a dedicated sport in India.

I think the best thing I can do now is to refresh the navigation lessons and make a conscious effort to track my self from the moment I'm in the water and slowly improve as I log more dives. The money is going to be better spent on another skills improvement course.

Best Regards